When the Cranes Fly South

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

THE SUNDAY TIMES WORD-OF-MOUTH BESTSELLER. A profoundly moving and life-affirming novel about one man’s desire to preserve his autonomy, the multitude of stories contained within a life, and the big things for which we have no words.

Shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize
Waterstones Book of the Month
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Bo is determined to live his own life in his own way. But his son has other ideas...

Bo lives a quiet existence in his small rural village in the north of Sweden. He is elderly and his days are punctuated by visits from his care team and his son. Fortunately, he still has his rich memories, phone calls with his best friend Ture, and his beloved dog Sixten for company.

Only now his son is insisting the dog must be taken away. The very same son that Bo is wanting to mend his relationship with before his time is up. The threat of losing Sixten stirs up a whirlwind of emotions and makes Bo determined to resist and find his voice...

‘So heartbreaking and funny and beautiful and wise… an extraordinary book’ RICHARD OSMAN

'You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll want to buy twenty copies and give them to everyone you love’ FREDRIK BACKMAN

‘The most moving book I’ve ever read.’ JACQUELINE WILSON

© Lisa Ridzén 2024 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Critics Review

So heartbreaking and funny and beautiful and wise… an extraordinary book
Richard Osman
The most moving book I’ve ever read – heart-breaking but also heart-warming.
Jacqueline Wilson
A novel anyone will take to heart. A simple yet effective meditation on mortality, love and care... Lisa Ridzén’s debut demonstrates how sometimes the simplest storytelling can be the most effective. Anyone anywhere who has worried for a crumbling parent, or worried about the crumble in themselves, or simply worried that their dog understood them better than their family, will identify with Ridzén’s novel.
Patrick Gale, Guardian
A tender tale about ageing, our own and others, and the quiet brutality of love. About what being a man is, and what being a human is, about fathers and sons and fathers and dogs. It’s really a book for anyone who’s had to say goodbye. The kind of book you give to someone when you’re really trying to say “I’ve been thinking about you” but don’t know how.
Fredrik Backman, No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove
This empathetic Swedish bestseller is a poignant, quietly devastating meditation on old age.
Mail on Sunday
This profoundly moving novel is sure to melt you into tears faster than a Cornetto in the sunshine ... Poignant, beautifully written and guaranteed to spark introspection.
Woman & Home
Through lucid, observant writing, Ridzén conveys the lack of autonomy allowed to elderly people in a heartfelt novel that gives voice to a sensitively realised old man.
Irish Times
Meditations on memory and fatherhood underpin this tender tale about a man defending his right to live independently.
Financial Times
It’s one of those “you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll want to buy twenty copies and give them to everyone you love” books.
New Yorker
There are not many novels that I want to tell you that you should read, but this is one of them. It is a novel about family, how our history shapes our present, and the many different forms that love can take. This is a beautiful and gentle novel about an honest and relatable man who simply wants to live quietly with his dog, and I won’t ever forget it.
NB Magazine

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